Abstract

Three crucial elements of creating and sustaining distance and online communities of learners are cognitive, social, and teacher presence. These elements are fundamental to ensuring that the educational contexts and environments framing a course of study are understood and engaged.This chapter interrogates a graduate pre-service teacher education course at an Australian university in terms of its efficacy in facilitating and enacting these elements.

The chapter identifies the centrality of presence, multiple and mutual responsibilities, the requirement for technologies to serve human needs, and the importance of explicating and interrogating contexts and environments as vital to sustainable communities of learners.